IN VIVO TRANSCRIPTION AND TRANSLATION OF DEFECTIVE-INTERFERING PARTICLE-SPECIFIC RNAS OF INFLUENZA VIRUS

Abstract

Publisher Summary The repeated high-multiplicity passage of influenza virus yields defective-interfering (DI) particles. These contain, in addition to the eight standard viral gene segments, other small RNA segments not found in the standard viral genome. The gene segment of origin is usually one of the three polymerase genes from which the DI RNA is derived by single or, occasionally, multiple internal deletions. DI RNAs are apparently generated by an aberrant replication event. RNA splicing is probably not involved because of the absence of any consensus splicing sequence in the regions flanking the deletion points. The hybridization analysis of specific DI transcripts with their corresponding DI RNA segments indicates that they are not in complete polymerase gene transcripts but are faithful transcripts of the DI RNAs. The chapter describes experiments for the transcription of DI RNAs in standard and DI-infected cells. All experiments were done with WSN virus and MDBK cells.